Labor on the attack: what’s the jobs plan?

Labor has seized on the government’s economic update to attack Josh Frydenberg for ‘missing the opportunity’ to release a plan for job creation.

People wait in a long queue outside the Centrelink office in Southport on the Gold Coast. Picture: AAP

Labor has seized on the government’s “eye-watering” economic update to attack Josh Frydenberg for “missing the ­opportunity” to release a plan for job creation as the nation confronts its most significant economic challenge since the Great Depression.

Announcing a deficit of $184.5bn this financial year, the Treasurer on Thursday said one in 10 Australian workers were ­expected to be unemployed by Christmas, with GDP forecast to contract by 0.25 per cent in 2019-20 and 2.5 per cent in 2020-21.

Opposition Treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers has long ­argued the economy was floundering and called out the government for not producing a plan for job creation when “there is a lot of anxiety in the community” surrounding soaring unemployment.

“With unemployment rising and forecast to hit 9.25 per cent, Australians need and deserve a plan to tackle the jobs crisis in this recession and create well-paid, secure jobs into the future,” Mr Chalmers said. “After months of delays, we still didn’t get that plan from the Morrison government.”

He said Australians would have been “deeply disappointed” by the government failure to present a plan to deal with unemployment.

Job creation is major concern, with more than 870,000 jobs lost between March and May, while about one million workers saw their hours cut.

But the Treasurer said the government’s quick thinking and rollout of a wage subsidy program had saved 700,000 jobs and lowered the forecast peak unemployment rate by almost five percentage points.

“These are mums and dads, sons and daughters, friends and colleagues,” Mr Frydenberg said. “Without the government’s economic support measures, unemployment would’ve peaked at five percentage points higher. The government’s economic measures have saved 700,000 jobs.”

Deloitte Access Economics partner Chris Richardson said he didn’t expect the employment rate to rise to its pre-COVID-19 level until at least 2024.

He said the government needed to consider job ­creation.

“Almost a million Australians have lost their jobs in a bid to save the health of the nation,” he said. “We owe it to the young, who will largely bear the brunt of this ­recession.”

AMP Capital economist Shane Oliver used his economic and fiscal update to argue the deficit blowout was affordable and “absolutely necessary”.